The Master’s in Public Administration is a major new initiative in executive education from the internationally renowned School of Business and Management at Queen Mary.
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The Master’s in Public Administration is a major new initiative in executive education from the internationally renowned School of Business and Management at Queen Mary.

An MPA is an internationally recognised qualification supporting those seeking to advance their careers in international organisations, national or regional government departments and agencies, local authorities, regulatory bodies and in voluntary bodies and firms which provide public services.

The Queen Mary MPA is a highly distinctive interdisciplinary programme combining academic rigour with professional development. Subject areas you will cover during your studies are management, policy sciences, organisation studies and economics (among others) to enable public managers to enrich and deepen their understanding of their work. You will also have many opportunities to attend meetings on campus addressed by major UK political figures and top public servants.

It is the professional qualification that leaders and ambitious staff often have, who work in making policy and advising policymakers, in running public services and in regulating organisations which provide those services.

• The Queen Mary MPA will enhance your career prospects, in any field of public management, nationally and internationally.

• You will have unrivalled access to leading politicians and public service managers who regularly come to Queen Mary to give guest lectures on many of our MPA modules. This is as a result of our close contacts with national and local government in the UK.

• Our programme is practical: you will learn concepts, frameworks and theories but we use these to focus on how public managers solve practical problems and strike trade-offs in difficult dilemmas which they face in running services and supporting policymaking.

• The course is international in design: we use international examples in every part of the course. We use a comparative approach to looking at countries; the course examines global and other supra-national tiers of governing.

• We emphasise the political context shaping public management.

• We look at both services and policy making: the Queen Mary MPA is a fully integrated programme covering public management from street level through a prime minister’s office to the headquarters of an international organisation.

• The programme provides opportunities to network and share ideas with a wide range of fellow managers from the UK and internationally.

• All MPA students will receive a free iPad to assist them with their studies.

Continuing Professional Development

A suite of CPD workshops will be running throughout the year for our MPA students; these are designed to enhance their skills and employability. Some sessions are provided by well-known external contributors and some by our own specialist in-house Management Learning team. For example, we run special workshops for MPA students in negotiating and bargaining skills, and in joint inter-agency working.

Course Structure

You will study eight modules, comprising of five compulsory and three elective modules.

Compulsory modules – Semester 1, September-December

Public policy and governance Economics of the public sector Public financial management and accounting Organisation behaviour in the public services Research methods

Option modules – Semester 2, January-March

Leadership and strategy in the public services Human resource management in the public services Global governance and international organisations Economics of development Managing diversity

Finally, you will undertake a piece of research, for which you will be supervised by an academic member of staff, and this will form the basis of a 12,500 word dissertation. You will have opportunities to use project work throughout the course and especially at the dissertation stage to contribute to your own organisation.